


The ABC's of Draco and Harry

by liarliarmumonfire (orphan_account)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Abusive Dursley Family, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Bullying, Eating Disorders, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Eventual Fluff, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, more to come as I update
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-15
Updated: 2016-08-15
Packaged: 2018-08-08 20:35:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7772251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/liarliarmumonfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The road won't be easy for Harry and Draco but they'll come out the other end okay. Hopefully.<br/>Snapshots of their lives and how they became intertwined.<br/>Each chapter will be alternating from one characters perspective to the other.<br/>Please enjoy and feel free to leave any comments or criticism.</p><p> </p><p>(Please check the tags for anything that may upset you)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The ABC's of Draco and Harry

**Author's Note:**

> ED will be a theme but not as prominent as in this chapter (its a big part of the story but it wont be centered around it like this chapter) so sorry if that is uncomfortable for you but you may want to find another story!  
> Please tell me if I've misrepresented anything or any mistakes you see.  
> (I will moderate all comments so if there's anything you want to tell me privately just say and I won't post it)  
> But also nice comments will make me more productive ;)

Admittedly the food choices at Hogwarts weren’t the best and by third year Harry had started to realise the effects of constant treacle tarts and chicken wings, although the free for all buffets had been heaven to the malnourished eleven year old, it had made him feel queasy at first as his stomach simply wasn’t used to more than one or two small meals a day. But three years in Harry had gained some of the weight he needed and finally small growth spurts started to happen. He was still one of the smallest in the year- Hermione used to be smaller than him but after the summer she had shot up and now stood a few inches taller than Harry. The weight gained wasn’t missed by others; Harry noticed the hidden smirks and laughter that were directed towards him on a daily basis. Sure there were a million and one reasons why people may look at him but to Harry there was only one.  
  
Other boys his age were starting to develop more, from Harry’s limited knowledge of his primary school education he knew that he should too. But it wasn’t happening as noticeably to Harry. Being in a dorm left more chances for accidents to happen. Neville was bigger than him but he had always been so that didn't bother Harry as much. Ron was tall and skinny, the rare moments when Harry had seen him without a shirt on for more than a few seconds he had seen the outline of his ribs, even with Ms Weasley’s cooking he managed to stay stick thin. But Harry, even with Quidditch training 3 times a week, hadn’t gained muscle like Oliver or even Angelina on the team he had just gained fat. His stomach had started to grow seemingly before his eyes while his arms and legs stayed skinny like before he came to Hogwarts. In his eyes he looked like something from care of magical creatures. Surely someone else would’ve noticed and spread it around. That’s why people have been looking at him.

  
Over the next few months that was all Harry could think about, he hadn’t dwelled on Sirius Black or even on the dementors, all of his time was spent on Quidditch training and how he looked. Adjusting his clothes to try and keep it loose to cover his torso drew the attention of the one person Harry hated the most. Draco Malfoy. First it started with Malfoy smirking at him- which was not unusual, especially after the Buckbeak incident- and then came the comments to Crabbe and Goyle about why Harry would need to adjust his trousers so often. These comments spread around the school quicker than fiendfyre and the laughter got worse. Even Ron gave him weird looks in class but Harry couldn’t tell him what was really bothering him, Ron was quick to react but slow to understand. He wouldn’t get what Harry is going through; he’s never had to worry about how he looked or about his weight.

Harry couldn’t find a way to stop the weight piling on him. He trained with either the twins or Oliver Wood as they were the most likely to be willing to go out with him no matter what the weather. But Oliver became his favourite to train with. He was always willing to go as hard and fast as Harry wanted and never looked at him weirdly when they thought he wasn’t looking like the twins did. They had started asking questions after they first saw Harry in the changing rooms; of course they would want to know why his body was weirdly shaped, why all this exercise wasn’t working. After the second week he stopped asking them, Oliver never glanced or voiced any concerns, he just cared about Quidditch. Of course this made Harry fitter and faster on a broom but all this work did nothing to shrink him. The only logical step in Harry’s mind was to eat less. Dudley was on a diet now and it seemed to work for him so why wouldn’t it work for Harry.

  
So it began, at first it was only one slice of toast for breakfast and less meat with lunch and dinner. This followed the structure of Dudley’s diet- Harry was an expert since he had spent the whole summer meticulously preparing every meal. The process was made harder by the fact Harry didn’t have any scales. It would be so much easier if he could way out the perfect amount and eat perfectly, instead he was left to estimate what everything weighted and it's calorie content. But even this wasn’t enough to make him normal sized like the rest of his friends. The meals were still too large for Harry to have lost weight- even combined with exercise- but he just guessed that he was over estimating the weight of everything. So he cut down even more: no breakfast apart from on match days, a sandwich for lunch and a small portion of meat and vegetables for dinner. No dessert.  
The dessert is what made Hermione notice at first, it was always Harry’s favourite part of dinner. But being the person she is just scolded harry on not eating much rather than wanting to know the reason behind it- not that Harry would tell her anyway.

“You’ll end up malnourished if you don’t eat, you know”

  
Harry knew she was right- he’d already been like that for the majority of his life- but it didn’t apply to him now. He knew how much he was eating was much more than he was at the Dursley’s so in this case Hermione was wrong. After he made a show of putting more potato on his plate Hermione went back to talking to a zoned-out Ron about Professor Lupin’s absence that week. Of course Harry didn’t plan to eat it and when the plates disappeared there was most of the food went with it. Harry left quickly, missing the look from Hermione- it turns out that he wasn’t as subtle as he thought he was and Hermione was more subtle than normal. Ron -on the other hand- was completely oblivious to the small interaction that happened between his two friends and had carried on eating chicken drumsticks until they literally disappeared.  
Today it seemed like Harry couldn’t catch a break because almost as soon as Harry went out of the hall Malfoy started to walk behind him until they reached a sparsely populated corridor, which was when Harry first noticed him. The surprise made Harry back into the stone wall and Malfoy blocked his path.

“Well Potter I’ve heard through the grapevine that you’ve been putting in extra training?”

“Of course I have; the more I do, the more I can humiliate you when I beat you” Harry spat at the smirking blonde.

“Beat me? You obviously know that you’ve fallen short,” But of course there was no cracks in Malfoy’s demeanour “Maybe it’s because you’ve become unfit? All those treacle tarts must not be good for your... physique.”

To make his point Malfoy poked the middle of Harry’s stomach. The action made Harry violently draw back on himself; smacking his head painfully again the stones, and then sliding to the floor. By the time his head had cleared enough that he could stand up Malfoy was nowhere to be seen. A few second year Ravenclaws were staring at him and giggling amongst themselves so he quickly got up and hurried back to the Gryffindor common room. There, Hermione and Ron were waiting for him. Turns out Harry had only been gone for around 10 minutes but with a serial killer running about looking for harry they found any period of absence suspicious. Harry was too stressed out from the confrontation with Malfoy and just wanted to be left alone. Apparently this triggered warning bells in Hermione’s head as an onslaught of questions got hurled his way. Too tired to dodge them Harry quietly explained what happened with Malfoy but omitted his feelings about his weight. Ron, understandably, was fuming. He may not have been the most emotionally supportive friend but this shows he really did care about Harry. While Hermione was quiet, obviously thinking what to do. From Harry’s experience this meant that she was planning to tell a teacher no matter what Harry thought of it, which would make him a laughing stock in Slytherin.

“Hermione, don’t tell anybody, its fine! Malfoy is just a dick it doesn’t mean anything”

“But Harry-“

“No, I can deal with it”

And with that Harry turned and walked to his dorm, Hermione didn’t even try to stop him. She turned to Ron- who was still red in the face from ranting about what he’d like to do to Malfoy- who stared back at her. It was very rare that Harry showed an attitude even if it was just for a second. Harry had always been timid and eager to please, it was both a relief and scary to see his true personality shine through.  
Up in the dorm room Harry sat huddled on his bed; Neville was across from him but made no attempt of his usual conversation, which Harry was thankful for as he wasn’t sure he could contain his temper at the moment. He was so tired, tired and hungry. The mere thought of it made Harry’s throat constrict, the thought that he couldn’t even go an hour without feeling hungry. Maybe he was weak; maybe Malfoy was right, he’d fallen short. He needed to try harder, to be stronger. He must’ve moved too suddenly because Neville took this as an invitation to start a conversation and –because only poor Neville would be this unfortunate- he asked about how Quidditch practise was going.

“I know you’ve been training a lot so I wonder- eek!”

Neville was soon shot down because of the death glare Harry was sending him. He opened his mouth to speak again but before any sound could’ve come out, the curtains snapped shut. With a silencing charm in place, Harry let the tears flow free. He couldn’t handle everything right now. First there was the Aunt Marge incident which surely meant he would be in even more trouble than normal when he went back to the Durselys. Then there was Sirius Black walking around Hogwarts wanting to murder him and with the added dementors here to “protect” them meant that his mental state wasn’t the best it’s ever been. Now with the added stress of this new revelation made his head feel like it was going to implode. He needed a new plan.

He needed to be stronger. He needed to prove to everyone that he could do it and he is better than this. There was a Quidditch match in a week. That’s where he would show people that he wasn’t a freak, that he was a normal person with a normal body who could live a normal life. He just needed to lose more weight quicker and he only had a week to do it. So he would skip meals, Harry knew he could survive on less, and train extra hard so he’ll be as fast as possible in the match. It would either be against Hufflepuff or Slytherin depending on who won tomorrows match. Harry hoped it was Hufflepuff -he couldn’t face Malfoy while trying to concentrate on finding the snitch it was almost impossible, even thinking of the earlier confrontation brought bile up his throat.

So that’s what Harry did. Of course Ron and Hermione were suspicious but Harry’s new found temper was almost unbearable so they watched on with worried gazes as their friend changed. Harry was no longer confident or even snarky anymore; his attitude seemed to have two extremes. He was either very arrogant or rude to everyone who dared talk to him including- much to his enjoyment- Snape which resulted in him almost missing the match. Or Harry was extremely jumpy and submissive, teachers noticed when he was like this the most as almost all the teachers knew not to confront this “new Harry” to keep him at bay but getting a whispered answer to a question was more disturbing than an angry one. Professor Lupin often looked like he wanted to scoop Harry into his arms like a toddler, stroke his hair and tell him everything will be okay. These moods got worse and worse every day until the match. The day before however, Harry happened to bump into Malfoy again, literally. Harry had been so absorbed in his own musings that he walked into the boy and almost toppled them both over. Realising who it was that he had almost knocked over Harry began to apologise, not wanting any extra bullying from the slytherins at the match tomorrow ( since Hufflepuff had lost by over 100 points he would face the slytherins). But Malfoy beat him to it.

“Watch where you’re going Potter; are you that self-absorbed that you have no respect for anything else?”

The ever-permanent smirk slid off Malfoy’s face when he saw Harry. He was shaking more noticeably than before, eyes fixed permanently on his shoes, Harry attempted to pass by Malfoy without any trouble. But if course Malfoy once again blocked his path with his arm and brought Harry back to face him again. Harry was starting to panic and all he wanted to do was to run away. He didn’t want to look at Malfoy, he didn’t want to hear his harsh remarks about his appearance and he absolutely didn’t want to be within 10 feet of the bastard. But he couldn’t move he was stuck frozen while Malfoy looked on. If Harry did look up he would’ve seen Malfoy’s wide eyes on him, on his body. But Harry was so stuck in his thoughts that he didn’t even think to look- or even speak- he just stood there frozen. The arm holding him in place suddenly retracted like it had been burnt and within a blink of an eye Malfoy was striding down the hallway, away from Harry. When he could no longer hear the sound of footsteps Harry lent again the nearest wall, utterly exhausted from the day so far, all he wanted to do was go to his bed and sleep for the next 15 hours but he knew Hermione would drag him to the library as soon as she saw him so he decided it was better to sit on the floor and rest until dinner.

Finally it was the day of the match. Harry woke up at 7am to get ready in time and for a last training session. His head hurt and felt heavy but he shook it off, this was the day he could prove himself to the others. That he was more than just a name or a bedtime story. That he wasn’t a freak to be pointed and laughed at. He met up with Oliver and walked to the pitch, telling him that he had eaten already so they didn’t need to swing by the hall. This wasn’t strictly a lie as Harry didn’t specify what he had eaten- in fact it was more than he normally would, one piece of toast with butter- Harry wasn’t stupid he knew if he didn’t eat his performance would be severely affected and that's the last thing he wanted. In the changing room Harry noticed that his trousers were a bit looser today, his face split into one of the first smiles he had all week. All of his hard work had paid off, finally it was working.

His new mood was noticed as Katie flinched when he spoke to her but had a look of surprise when he wished her good luck, Harry put this down to how she noticed his new and improved body in the rather tight fitting clothes. Unfortunately he didn’t notice the looks exchanged around the rest of the team about both his new demeanour and body. But they all seemed slightly happier that Harry seemed in a good mood to play Quidditch. Finally they stepped out onto the field and lined up for Madame Hooch to start the game. For once- to Harry’s surprise- Malfoy just looked at them, no scathing words or snide remarks. The same unidentifiable look was on his face that Harry had seen on countless others; teachers, students and even shop keepers when he managed to sneak out. But Harry didn’t have any time to dwell on what it might be as the whistle blew and they were up in the air. The sudden pressure difference made Harry’s head swim but with his new firebolt he was already zooming across the pitch. They played for 40 minutes before Harry spotted the snitch. The chasers on both sides scoring big numbers, it looked like it was a fairly even game so it was down to the seekers to win it for their house. The sun caught the gold of the snitch and Harry turned sharply to follow it. Malfoy quickly caught on and followed Harry. The small ball flew downwards suddenly so Harry was almost vertical in the air, travelling so fast that the edges of his vision were blurring. The snitch was just out of his grip and then...nothing.

Harry woke up in the hospital wing, a now familiar sight. Madame Pomfrey stood over him as he opened his eyes. It was rare to get such prolonged attention from her as she had so many patients at once. Harry wondered what happened. Maybe a bludger had hit him or maybe the broom was really a trick and bucked him off at the last moment. But after asking Madame Pomfrey it seems like he simply fainted and now was banned from Quidditch practise until his head cleared up. The same look was also on her face and now Harry could see what it is. Pity. But why did everyone pity him? He was just improving himself, couldn’t they see that? To have even his enemy pity him was horrible, surely that's not right. Malfoy shouldn’t feel bad for him. Harry was fine and he knew what he was doing. Yes of course he knew that it wasn’t exactly healthy to eat as little as he did but he’s still alive isn’t he? He couldn’t bring himself to even give into the pleasure of thinking about food. He screwed up his chance to prove himself and failed his house. None of his team mates were here to see him like they normally where. Not even Ron and Hermione. He was alone with only his bag to amuse him. So at least he could do homework or even read. He decided to do the latter to pass the time and reached his hand into the bag only to feel something foreign. An apple. With a note written in neat cursive, “Eat me”.


End file.
